


false front (real memory)

by moth_writes



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: AFTG Reverse Big Bang, Embedded Images, Flashbacks, Gen, M/M, Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-16 09:35:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29822970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moth_writes/pseuds/moth_writes
Summary: Neil's met all of the Foxes before.Aftg Reverse, with amazing art from Fornavn!
Relationships: Kevin Day & Neil Josten, Neil Josten & Aaron Minyard, Neil Josten & Andrew Minyard, Neil Josten & Danielle "Dan" Wilds, Neil Josten & Renee Walker, Neil Josten & The Foxes (All For The Game), Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Comments: 4
Kudos: 61
Collections: AFTG Reverse Big Bang 2021





	false front (real memory)

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This is my [AFTG Reverse](https://aftgreverse.tumblr.com/) fic, based on this wonderful art by [Fornavn](https://fornavn.tumblr.com/)!

When Neil comes home scarred and scared he sees their reaction.

He sees the horror. Sees the pity, the fear.

Sees the _recognition._

_I know you_ , they whisper _. I remember you. From exy courts and drugstores and mountain resorts, we remember._

The Foxes sit in a hotel room in Baltimore and tell stories, tell memories.

Neil is no stranger, somehow. Not to them.

  
  


Kevin doesn’t want to remember the Nest. 

He doesn’t have a choice. Kevin remembers it all, knows in his soul he’ll never forget the sight of a man in pieces and Riko’s blood-stunned smile.

He was excited, at first. Someone new, someone younger, for him to teach and show and train in the sport he loves so much.

_“I remember that,” Neil says, leaning against a worn out couch. “You were so excited. So bossy, too. I’d never met anyone who loved exy as much as I did.”_

Kevin remembers meeting him, a small boy with fire in his eyes and fear in his posture. He’d taken in the white-knuckled grip on a well-used stick, the way something had lit inside when he’d seen the court.

Kevin knows it, knows that love and excitement. He saw it every time he looked in a mirror.

_“I know,” Neil whispers into listening silence. “I see it everyday, too. Just not in a mirror.”_

_He meets, one by one, each of his teammates eyes and wants more than anything to stay._

They played, Kevin and Riko and Nathaniel. For hours and hours, up and down the court until they were breathing hard and running slow. Kevin collapsed onto the stands, saying they’d be back playing after a rest and listening to Riko’s exhilarated, breathless laugh and the tap of Nathaniel’s shoes against the bleachers as his feet swung lazily.

And then the door had opened and the silence shattered like dropped glass. 

_“You don’t have to tell this part,” Neil says._

_“No,” Kevin tells him with steel woven into his core and threaded through his words. “I will. I won’t let them have my silence, not anymore.”_

Kevin and Riko and Nathaniel stumble to their feet and across the court, leaning on their racquets, on each other.

Instead of beckoning them through and out into the Nest’s winding hallways, Nathaniel’s father stepped out with a smile like razors and the Master at his side.

Nathaniel stumbled back, head bowed, and waited for Nathan to pass. Behind them, two men guided a third held between them tightly. Kevin didn’t look, tracing the _2_ written on his cheek and watching the way Nathaniel’s shoulders went tense and tight.

He watches, though, as the man is forced to kneel and Nathaniel’s father pulls a hatchet from the bag slung at his side.

Kevin remembers the sound of blood spraying and bone breaking and the horrified, pained scream of a man dying.

_“We know,” Renee says gently, laying a hand on his shoulder. “You don’t have to, you know. You don’t owe us the story.”_

_“I know,” Kevin tells her, tells them all. “But I want to. I want this, all of this, out. You have to understand what they’ll do, if they find us.”_

_“They won’t,” Andrew says, and his voice is blades sharpened and the heavy presence of protection laid thick._

The leg came away with tendons trailing and blood pooled.

The hatchet, gleaming dully, comes down again.

Kevin watches the Master instead, clutching his racquet to his chest and trying not to wince.

Nathaniel, at his side, watches the gore with the kind of resigned apathy that came with long familiarity. Kevin remembers watching him wrap his arms around his torso loosely, remembers meeting too-blue eyes briefly. 

_“You were so used to it,” Kevin tells Neil. “I…”_

_“I know,” Neil says. “I was. That wasn’t the first time I saw my father kill, and not the last.”_

_Neil does his best to ignore the horrified, pitying stares of his teammates and waits for Kevin to continue._

When Kevin glances at Riko, his furrowed brow and distracted eyes give away nothing. Kevin watches Riko, waits until he looks up and meets his eyes.

The glint in them, the fascinated disgust Kevin sees leaves him breathless and dizzy.

_“So he’s always been bloodthirsty?” Nicky asked, half joking._

_“Yes,” Kevin tells him. He’s serious, completely, eyes like stones and shoulders tense. “Always. I was. I was just too blind to see until too late.”_

_And Kevin sighs, slumps, like his strings have been cut and his spine torn away neatly._

_“It’s not your fault, “ Renee says and there’s iron woven through. “You were so young.”_

_“Young and blind,” Kevin says and closes his eyes. He sighs, steels himself, and continues._

Kevin remembers how many blows it had taken for the second led to split, how many it had taken for the arms. He remembers blood pooled and spreading slowly, knows the deep revulsion of metal hanging heavily in the air and the echoing screams of an almost dead man.

It had taken hours.

****

_Kevin stops, takes a deep breath. He doesn’t continue, leaning back with his eyes closed instead._

_Renee and Andrew share a look. Neil rubs at his bandaged wrists. Nicky surreptitiously wipes at his eyes._

_“I was almost thirteen,” Andrew starts._

  
  


_Andrew_

Andrew is almost thirteen and tired and perched on the very edge of desperate.

He remembers the winds, harsh and cold on his face. He remembers the burn of fabric on fresh cuts, the ache in his muscles. The way looking down made his heart trip and his breath catch and fear wound tight around him.

Andrew remembers the click of the door behind him. He hadn’t cared to look.

He didn’t care about anything. He couldn’t make himself. Wouldn’t make himself.

Steps shuffle closer. Andrew closes his eyes, tips his head back, lets his breath out in a rush.

Andrew remembers in perfect clarity the sound of fabric shift as someone sat beside him.

He looks. A boy, maybe a year younger. Pale, though not as much as him, with dark hair and hazelish eyes.

Andrew looks. The boy looks back. Andrew closes his eyes again and leans back, back, back, until he’s pressed flat against hot tile and his feet kick over the edge.

_“I remember that,” Neil says. “You looked so alone.”_

_I was alone, Andrew says. “It was safer that way.”_

“I’m Chris,” the boy says and Andrew turns to him. He gives him his flattest look, his most scornful.

“Didn’t ask,” Andrew tells him.

“I know,” the boy says. “But. I think you need someone.”

“I need no one,” Andrew says sharply. He doesn’t.

_“You do,” Nicky says tearfully. “I wish I had been there sooner.“_

_“No. Do not do that.” Andrew tells him with the same sharp tone Neil remembers from years ago. “You were there for Aaron when I was not, and you stayed. Do not blame yourself for the failings of my past.”_

_Nicky sniffles and wipes his nose. He doesn’t say anything more._

_Aaron looks pensively at Andrew and fiddles with his hoodie strings._

“Everyone needs someone,” Chris says. “Even if just to talk too.”

“I don’t.”

“You do.”

“No.”

“What’s your name?”

“Andrew,” Andrew says before he can stop himself. Chris smiles and leans back, laying down beside him.

_“So you’ve always had this kind of relationship,” Allison says thoughtfully. Matt nods and Dan shushes Allison, pushing her back and laying her feet across her lap._

“Andrew,” Chris muses, drawing the word out. Andrew remembers the way it felt to hear him say his name like that, long and drawn out and like it had meaning. Like it was something valuable, not the word half scrawled on the arm of an abandoned kid.

“Chris,” Andrew says because he wants to know what it feels like, to hold someone’s name in your mouth and pretend it had meaning.

He gives it up. He wants nothing. 

He tells himself so over and over until the words blur in his mind. _You want nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing._

Andrew watches Chris. Chis watches Andrew.

Andrew reaches into the bag left behind him and draws out a crumpled envelope. He passes it to Chris wordlessly, watches his confusion as he recites the letter inside to himself.

Chris is a slow reader. It takes almost fifteen minutes-by guess-for him to finish and meet Andrew’s eyes.

“So there’s two of you?” he jokes weekly. “Poor world.” Andrew snorts.

“I do not want him in this house.”

“Your house?”

“My foster family’s house.”

“Oh. Why?”

Andrew hesitates. Fuck it, he decides in an unfamiliar rush of emotion. What’s the worse that could happen. He opens his mouth.

And closes it again.

He can’t make the words come. He remembers how they welled in his throat, how his brain screamed shutupshutupshutup, how his hands shook and his breath caught.

He remembers forcing the words out. He doesn’t remember the phrases he used-it’s all blurred into screaming rage, screaming pain-but he remembers Chris’s reaction.

Grey eyes go flinty, like steel. Like ice frozen over in winter, fragile and dangerous. The spark.

Chris details a plan for him. It’s solid, thought-out, and Andrew thinks it might work.

Andrew sits and ignores the relief bubbling in his chest. His stomach growls. Andrew doesn’t react, but Chris’ eyebrows furrow and he reaches for the bag at his feet.

“Hungry?” Chris asks. Andrew eyes him, but he’s decided Chris can’t hurt him. What’s a little bit of trust?

Andrew doesn’t think of all the thousands of ways a little bit of trust given has been thrown back in bloody slashes across his soul. He doesn’t need the reminder.

_Nicky buries his face in his hands. Renee’s brows draw together, eyes like stones. Aaron looks at Andrew, at Neil, lays one hand gently on Nicky’s back._

Andrew nods, shrugs. Chris pulls out a package, orange and white and crinkled plastic.

“ _Bisbit_ ,” Andrew reads. “Sounds foriegn.”

“They are,” Chris says. He sounds smug, sort of, like having forgein cookies was some sort of brag. “I have some left over from when Mom and I were abroad.”

_“Bragging about cookies?” Allison says. “That’s my Neil.”_

_“I wasn’t bragging!” Neil protests over her snickering._

_Andrew hums._

_“Fine,” Neil concedes. “Maybe I was. But only a little.”_

“Abroad, were you?” Andrew mocks.

“Yeah,” Chris says. His eyes light with humor and he holds the bag to his chest protectively. Andrew tsks.

“Now, now,” he says, “don’t get your feathers ruffled. Prick.”

“Prat,” Chris shoots back. He tears the plastic open, pulling out two and holding them up. Andrew takes one, inspects it.

He feels a smile tugging slightly at his mouth. He doesn’t try to fight it.

He takes a bite. The sun sets slowly. Andrew has a plan, has a cookie, has someone he trusts minimally. He closes his eyes.

  
  


****

_Andrew leans back and looks up. He doesn’t say anything more._

_Dan sits up and stretches. “I think I’m up next, then,” she says._

  
  


_Dan_

Dan picks at the peeling letters on her jersey and watches the clock.

This is her last class of the day, and after it’s over she can go get some extra practice with the rest of the team at the community courts before work tonight. She doesn’t factor in time for schoolwork.

She doesn’t really care. She’ll be stuck in this dead-end neighborhood taking care of her aunt and her cousins forever anyway, and she’d rather enjoy the little bit of freedom she has now than waste it on essays.

_“Bad idea, kids,” Dan says, mock scolding. “Do your homework.”_

The final bell rings and Dan’s gone, out of school and down the street less than five minutes later. She stops at the second corner-too many kids clustered at the first, like always-and strips her jersey off, balling it up and stuffing it into her mostly empty bag.

She hates the jersey-a-week-before-a-game rule. It’s stupidly long and the jerseys are all secondhand, passed to whoever has the most similar name. Her’s says fucking _Wilson_ , for fuck’s sake.

She thinks if she didn’t love exy so much the jersey would’ve been her breaking point.

As it is, though, she doesn’t know if she can continue. Women are signed to college teams so rarely she can count all of the ones she knows of on her fingers, and she can’t name a single woman in professional exy.

Dan puts thoughts of the future out of her mind-it’s not likely she’ll even get out of this city, anyway-and starts jogging towards the practice center.

_“You left,” Matt says, reaching out to squeeze Dan’s shoulder softly. She smiles at him, bright and relieved and full of fire, that spark of old doubts burned._

_“Yeah,” she replies with words that ring with warmth, “Coach helped me leave. Best decision I ever made, signing to the Foxes.”_

She arrives a little early and spends her extra time getting ready. These practices aren’t mandatory, but if she doesn’t have work she always goes. Dan knows she won’t have any time for exy at all once she graduates-or drops out-so she does her best to get every little bit she can in.

About half of the team shows up, and between them and some other kids they convince to join there’s enough to get a real game going. Dan takes her place on the field and waits.

Her blood is already pounding through her and her palms sweat with anticipation. She waits for the whistle, and when it goes-she _off_.

She runs and catches and passes and plays and plays and plays, and it’s as much a thrill as it was the first time. She almost doesn’t notice the little blond kid sitting alone on the bleachers, watching them with an awed expression.

The Coach calls the game’s end, and Dan stops regretfully. Her team won, of course, and she’s happy for it. 

She can’t help but miss it, though. That brief peace that came from moving and thinking about the game and only the game.

_“I still feel like that,” Dan says. “The game, it’s.” She hesitates, trails off._

_“Encompassing?” Nicky suggests. Dan shakes her head._

_“Consuming,” Kevin says and it’s quiet, fervent. “Like nothing exists outside of the court walls and nothing else matters.”_

_Dan nods, and Neil closes his eyes slowly. There’s a silence like reverence that fills the room and lights their hearts on fire._

_“I almost died to play exy,” Neil says slowly, eyes still closed. “I would again.”_

_Kevin leans back and clutches his scarred hand to his chest._

_Dan clears her throat and continues._

They switch off and Dan goes to sit on the bench. 

She’s too slow, though, and it’s full of fuckboys by the time she gets to it.

“Why don’t you sit in my lap?” one of them jeers. “You’ll like it, I promise.”

“The only thing I’d like to do to you is cut your dick off,” she throws back and keeps walking. He huffs.

“Whatever. I hear all you strippers are whores, anyway. I’d have to double bag it.” He sits back, smug, and it’s all Dan can do to keep walking. His buddies cheer and throw in more stupid comments. Dan ignores them.

_“I’ll kill them,” Matt snarls. “If they so much as laid a hand on you-”_

_“They didn’t, babe,” Dan says. She leans back into Matt and he loops his arm around her, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. “I don’t need you to fight my battles.”_

_“I know,” Matt says into her shorn hair. “But I’ll cheer you on if you want to track down anybody and kick them in the balls.”_

_Dan laughs. “I might take you up on that, babe,” she jokes._

_Andrew speaks flatly, suddenly. “You will tell me next time.”_

_Dan looks at him, startled and on the edge of anger. She starts to say something, but Andrew cuts her off. “No. You are one of mine now, and I will not let anyone treat one of mine like that.”_

_They stare at Andrew, who sits placidly. He watches Dan with unblinking eyes until she huffs out a short breath and continues._

_Neil presses his hand to Andrew’s briefly, throwing him a small, genuine smile. Andrew blinks back and gives the barest of nods._

Dan passes the bench and keeps going, heading straight for the stands. The blond boy she’d seen earlier is still there, and Dan this why not. She sits a couple feet away from him and leans back, stretching her legs in front of her.

“Hi,” she says, turning just her head towards the boy. “You here to play or just watch?”

“Watch,” he mutters. “Waiting for my mom.”

“Cool,” Dan says. They lapse into silence for a moment, then-

“How long have you been playing? You’re really good,” the boy blurts and flushes red. Dan half smiles-he’s cute, and she hasn’t met many boys his age (11? 12?) who aren’t all trying to be assholes like their older brothers.

“Couple years,” Dan tells him. She doesn’t miss the look of envy that crosses his face. “Do you play?”

“No,” he sighs. “I wish I could, but my mom doesn’t like it.”

“Sports in general or exy in particular?”

“Mostly exy, but I can’t do any others either.” Dan understands that-exy gets a lot of backlash from helicopter parents worried about its nature. The school almost had to shut down the exy program completely a few years ago.

“Sucks,” Dan says. The boy nods, looking at the court with that oddly intense want again.

Dan checks-there’s no sign of stopping on the court anytime soon, and she’s bored. She makes a split second decision. Boys are always tricky-she can never tell if they’ll be assholes-but the kid is too thin. She thinks she could wrap her hand around his tiny stick wrist twice and still have her fingers overlap. “Want to go get something to eat with me? I’m bored and no offense, kid, but you could use a bit of meat on those bones.”

_“I wasn’t that small!” Neil protests. Dan hums._

_“You kinda were, kid. I’m not exaggerating much.” She gives him a slow look. “You haven’t grown much, either.”_

_Nicky and Allison laugh. Renee smiles softly. Neil shakes his head, but there’s a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth that he can’t quite hide._

“I’d have to call my mom,” he says. He looks nervous, and Dan can see why.

Dan hums. “Go on, then. I want a milkshake.” The boy’s eyes go wide and Dan smiles. (Pre?) Teen boys are all the same, hungry all the time.

The kid pulls a phone out of his bag. As he’s typing, Dan remembers she never got his name.

“Hey, kid,” she says and he looks at her. “I never got your name. I’m Dan, by the way.”

He hesitates. “Alex.”

Dan smiles. Alex’s phone pings and he looks at her, a hesitant half-smile on his face.

“I can go,” he tells her. “I have to be home at five, though.”

“Well then, Alex,” Dan says. “Let’s go, shall we?”

…

Alex follows obediently as Dan leads him through the streets. He stays a distance behind and she knows he doesn’t trust her-she doesn’t trust him. But she’s a bleeding heart and he’s still a kid, and it’s not much but it’s still better than nothing.

_“Just like Coach,” Renee hums. She smiles, and it’s soft and gentle and edges with knives. “I see why you two get along so well.”_

They find the diner Dan is looking for and get a table quickly. It’s not busy, but there’s a few people. Dan’s stage sister is a waitress here, so she tries to stop by as often as she can.

She starts an idle conversation while they wait for their milkshakes and fries. Alex doesn’t speak much at first, but he opens up the more she needles.

He directs everything back at her so smoothly she barely realizes it. She doesn’t mind. They sip their milkshakes-hers is death-by-chocolate with extra whipped cream, his is vanilla-and let time slip by.

Then she asks if he likes exy, and he lights up brighter than the sun.

_“Of course,” Matt snorts. “Always exy, Neil.”_

_Neil grins. “Always.”_

And like that he’s off, rambling on and on about teams and stats and things Dan has never been able to talk to anyone else about.

Their food is long gone by the time Alex putters out, eyes shining. It’s four-thirty, about, and Alex has to go.

He stops next to her and holds out a hand. It’s strangely-amusingly-formal, so Dan shakes his hand and watches him leave.

He won’t ever play, he’d said. His mother won’t let him. Dan feels the resolve build in her soul, brick by brick until she’s got her whole life planned out before her.

She’s not quitting exy. She’s going to do as much as she possibly can to get a scholarship, and she’s going to play through college and into the pros. She has to, now.

She doesn’t have exy players like her, but she’ll be damned if another little girl looks at a lineup and thinks she’ll never make it.

Dan’s going all the way, for all the kids who can’t. All the kids who don’t know they can.

****

_“And then I did,” Dan quips, smiling wryly. Matt squeezes her tight, planting a kiss on her cheek and laughing delightedly._

_“It’s quite admirable,” Renee says serenely. “You’re a role model, Dan.”_

_“Don’t know if I’d go that far,” Nicky starts, but he yelps and quiets when Allison throws him a sharp glare._

_“Alright, alright,” Matt says. “Who's next?”_

_“Me, I think,” Aaron says, leaning back with his eyes closed. It’s quiet and half-sullen, almost reluctant._

_They watch him and he starts, slowly._

Aaron turns down the aisle and wanders aimlessly.

He’s in no hurry to get home, and Tilda is likely too drunk to notice his absence. Andrew will be out, doing whatever it is Andrew does. His bruises throb under his thankfully loose jacket, and Aaron pauses briefly to lean against the shelves.

He glances around quickly-there’s no one here, and he’s at the back of the store. Aaron pulls the sandwich bag with a handful of pills out and swallows two dry, waiting for the buzz of it to sweep him away.

He stays too long. He’s tired, after classes and no sleep last night, and it’s made his senses dull.

Then there’s someone at his side. A kid, two of three years younger than him. With dirty blond hair and gray eyes, he looks the same as any other kid off the street.

Aaron sighs. He’s too tired, bone-deep weary for this. He just wants to get some ibuprofen and get out.

He ignores the boy-who’s the same height as he is, maybe taller, he notes-and slips past into the next aisle. Aaron passes boxes of cheap medical supplies and cough syrup before he’s at the over-the-counter meds, where he stops and stares.

There’s no ibuprofen. The space where it usually sits is empty, not a single one left. He checks the rest of the aisle and no, there’s none anywhere.

The tag with the price and the name is still there, and it’s mocking Aaron. He glares. He hadn’t planned on paying, and the tag throws a sharp spike of anger through him.

He’s still standing there, glaring, when the kid from before appears at his elbow again. Aaron doesn’t look until he speaks in a voice rough with disuse.

“Tylenol doesn’t work as well, but it’s better than the off-brand here,” he says, gesturing. Aaron crosses his arms and glares, ignoring the pain from his black eye. The boy blinks back, unsmiling. 

Aaron tugs his hood a little farther down.

_“You shouldn’t have known all that so soon,” Nicky says. “I barely knew what ibuprofen was until I was like, sixteen.”_

_“Didn’t your parents also believe a boy wearing a dress was the devil incarnate?” Allison says, raising an eyebrow. Nicky points at her, waving his finger mock-chasitingly._

_“True, but irrelevant.” Nicky sighs and leans back, waving vaguely at the ceiling. He doesn’t look at Aaron when he says “I should have seen it. You were always right there, and I never noticed.”_

_Aaron ignores the voice in the darkest corner of his mind that mutters that Nicky’s right. “No,” he says instead, “you had other things to worry about. Your own problems. I made it out, and so did you, and it doesn’t matter anymore.”_

_Nicky starts to sit up and argue. Aaron glares. “No. The past is the past, Nicky. Don’t.”_

_The Foxes lapse into silence for a tense moment, then Aaron resumes his story._

When Aaron doesn’t move to grab the Tylenol, the boy does, snatching it off the shelf and holding it out in a clean, quick movement. Aaron takes it, hesitantly, one arm still clutched to his side.

He doesn’t look at the price. The boy’s eyes sharpen, gray turned icy and cutting. He leans in, whispers. “Do you need a distraction?”

Aaron nods, looking down. “Yeah,” he mutters.

“Sure,” the boy says and pauses. “You kind of remind me of someone. It’s the hair, I think. Maybe the eyes.”

Aaron blinks. He’s not told that often-his looks are fairly unique, with his hair so blond and his eyes hazel instead of blue. Maybe he’d met Andrew, sometime in the years before? He starts to say something, anything else, but the kid just smiles slightly and turns on his heel.

And then the boy is off. 

He strolls up to the woman at the counter with Aaron a distance behind him. Aaron pretends to be looking at the shelves of candy while the kid leans over the counter and, after throwing an anxious look around, asks quietly about tampons. 

Aaron hesitates, blinks. It works almost too well, with the woman stepping out and leading the kid down an aisle. Aaron takes his chance, slipping through the doors quickly. He’s across the parking lot and half a block down before he stops to dry-swallow a few pills.

They don’t help, not immediately, but it’ll be better soon. It has to be.

He just hopes the bruises fade soon. And that Andrew believes he got a black eye during practice, not from their mother’s fist.

He gives up hoping. It doesn’t do much.

He’ll just have to wait and see.

****

  
  


_Neil sighs and avoids their eyes._

_Allison realizes why a second later, and her mouth presses into a thin line. Renee lays a hand on her arm, gentle and stern, and Allison slumps toward her._

_“I’m next, I think.” Neil says, and his voice is small and hesitant. “Seth isn’t here to tell it.”_

_“I don’t know if he would have even if he was here,” Allison tells them from Renee’s shoulder. “He never wanted to talk about the past. Said it was all done and over and there was no use in reliving it.”_

_“He was right,” Aaron says. He doesn’t elaborate, just stares blankly at his sock feet._

_“He told me this one, though. At the start of the year. Said Neil reminded him of someone.” Allison straightens and looks Neil in the eye, deadly and serious and with all the pain of loss. “I’ll tell it for him.”_

_Neil nods. “You want to go first, or..” he trails off, still holding Allison’s gaze._

_“No,” she says. “You start.”_

_Neil clears his throat and begins. It’s quieter, more serious than it had been._

He is in that odd, no-names place. He isn’t Alex, not anymore, and he wouldn’t be Stefan until they landed in Germany. 

He thinks of himself as Abram, between. It was what his mother called him, on the days where he had nothing else and she was as nameless, as unmarked and untethered as she could be. 

_“I think that was when she felt best,” Neil confesses. “No names or identities to tie her down, nothing to pretend and no one to be.”_

Abram woke to his mother’s insistent whispers and on-the-edge-of-sharp taps, as he does most mornings. He sits still while she changes the bandages over his shoulder, then checks her wounds under harsh instructions.

They are going to a contact of hers, one who could get them the last of their paperwork. It’s a long wait, and a familiar one.

Abram sits at the window at the front of the shop, half listening to his mother’s hurried conversation behind him. Not many pass-it’s early in the day, and the shop is far enough away from the main streets that no one came this way unless they had to.

Abram watches a man on a motorcycle speed through the alley, stopping two doors down. He ducks lower in his seat, just in case, and counts to fifty while he waits.

When he sits up the man was gone and the first people he’d seen pass on foot were walking down the street.

Abram watches. A boy a few years older carrying a little girl in a yellow dress, a boy with a shopping bag in one hand at their side. They are laughing, and Abram wants more than anything to know _why_.

He doesn’t have any siblings. His mother couldn’t have kids after him, and he doesn’t think his parents wanted any more anyway.

He half-mourns it now, because. It would be nice, he thinks, to have somebody that understands. Someone with the same experiences, someone he could trust no matter what. (His mother. She was that, but she was distant. Business-like. Keeping them alive and on the run was her purpose, and she thought of nothing else.)

He watches them turn the corner and disappear and wishes he could go with them, If only for a day.

_Allison sighs and shakes her head. “You wouldn’t have wanted to,” she says. “They weren’t...weren’t ideal. Seth was a Fox for a reason.”_

_“I know,” Neil replies. “Now. Back then all I saw was a happy family. Happy-appearing.”_

_Allison hums. “Right. Seth told me it, once, but Seth was...he wasn’t a storyteller.”_

_“I know,” Matt says, and there’s resigned grief there. “Getting him to tell me anything was like pulling teeth.”_

He saw you too, you know. He thought you looked sad, pitiful in a bullet-proof vest.

Scared.

He had his sister tucked in one arm and his brother at his side and his bruises hurt. You didn’t see it, but he was black-and-blue under there, beaten to bits. That’s how he told me-beaten to bits, like he’d fall apart.

He saw you and he thought, well. There’s always someone out there with a worse life than you.

And that was what kept him going. There’s someone out there with a worse life, and he’ll work and work until that number grows.

  
****

_Matt whistles. “Pretty sad life view.” He pauses, then asks “World view? Spiteful more than anything.”_

_“That was Seth,” Allison agrees. “Spiteful to the last.”_

_“Where did you go next, Neil?” Renee asks._

_“Germany,” he answers. “That means…”_

_“I’m next,” Nicky finishes. “Right.”_

_He takes a deep breath in, exhales it slowly. Nicky meets Neil’s eyes and something like remembrance, like recognition, sparks._

He is happy.

It’s sunny, and he is warm, and it feels like being safe, wrapped up in Erik’s arms. Safe like home had never really been.

_“I’m glad you’re out of there,” Aaron says, surprisingly fierce. “You didn’t deserve that.”_

_Nicky meets his eyes, smiles sadly. “Neither did you,” he says softly. He continues before Aaron can say anything._

They took Erik’s younger siblings and their dogs to a nearby park. The kids, both far younger than Erik-eight and eleven-run screaming around trees and chasing the dogs. 

Nicky watches the younger one climb a tree and hopes against hope he knows how to get himself down.

Nicky watches the people pass, walking down the worn-out street with pets and lovers and children. He sees, briefly, himself-his future with Erik, right here. Away from everything horrible and bad in the States, here with the love of his life and their dogs-to-be.

And then he remembers Aaron, and the resignation sets in. He can’t leave him there, not forever. Nicky needed to get away to stay alive. Aaron doesn’t have the same luxury.

_“Thank you,” Aaron says. “I never...I didn’t…”_

_“Andrew isn’t the only one who gave up good things for you,” Nicky says, and it’s more serious than they’ve seen him in a long time. He holds up one hand when Aaron opens his mouth, guilt half-plastered over his face._

_“No,” Nicky says. “Don’t thank me. We’re family, right? That’s what we do.” He shoots Aaron a small, genuine smile and continues before he can reply._

_(Aaron feels the realization like sunshine and chains. He’s been so blind, before.)_

Nicky puts Aaron and America out of his mind and focuses on the present. He’s here, now, and he can’t do much from Germany.

He leans into Erik. Nicky glances at the kids, still playing around the base of the tree-wrong one to climb, apparently, but from the snatches of conversation he can hear they’ve found a different use for it. Fairy doors and magical lands and something about a river.

Then someone else walks past, and he’s in such contrast from the happy couples Nicky has to double-take.

He’s limping, just slightly, and his hood is pulled up. He keeps the bag slung over his shoulder tucked tight to him, like he’s afraid someone is going to snatch it away.

Nicky, drunk off the happiness of sitting here in the sun and trying to ignore the existence of America, shouts after him.

Sort of. “Hey, pretty boy,” he calls. It’s half flirty, half teasing. “What are you doing alone on such a nice day? You can come sit with us, if you want,” he adds when the boy whips around.

Nicky isn’t flirting, not seriously. The boy is too young, and he has Erik. But Nicky thinks he’s accidentally said something terribly offensive with the way the boy whips around.

He glares with such vitriol that Nicky’s afraid he’ll burn a hole straight through them. Erik, blind to it, presses his face into Nicky’s hair and mumbles something.

The boy’s eyes, when they meet his, are the icy blue of too-deep water and iced over streets. Nicky recoils from the pure hate and anger radiating from him and tries to look away.

The boy starts to speak, and Nicky thinks his voice will be the rough scrape and harsh tones of television demon.

He doesn’t get the chance to find out. 

Someone he can’t see shouts a word, something short he doesn’t recognize. The boy whips around to stare that direction, and Nicky watches a woman with short brown hair and too-high heels step forward quickly.

“Nathaniel?” she calls. “Come here, love. Your father is looking for you.”

She strikes Nicky as off-like something fake, a rotten thing with syrup poured over. He thinks for a second it’s the shock of hearing English, but when he looks it’s much deeper than that. He looks at the boy, then elbows Erik and explains in quick, quiet German.

Erik nods and they stand, clinging like a new couple and acting sickly sweet. Between cooing praise and pulling Erik in a strange version of a waltz Nicky looks at the boy, meets his eyes with deathly seriousness.

_Go_ , he mouths and jerks his head back at the woman coming closer. _We’ll distract her_.

The boy nods, something like wary gratitude shining on his tired face. He turns and starts the walk away quickly. Smart-running would have drawn more attention. This likely isn’t the first time something like this has happened to him.

Erik spins Nicky right into the path of the woman and they collide hard. She goes down with a sickening crack, and when Nicky looks her ankle is at an odd angle.

He’s fine-he’s tougher than he looks, but the woman is pale and almost furious. Nicky makes a show of apologizing loudly, in English and German, and draws a concerned crowd.

Her ankle is at least sprained, most likely broken. The height of her heels combined with both her and Nicky’s weight and the angle they landed ensures it.

An ambulance arrives soon enough, with a police officer along in case she wants to take Nicky to court. (So he assumes. Nicky isn’t actually sure of what happens here.)

He steps up to him while the woman is being helped over. The officer looks at him, then flips out a notepad and asks him for his name.

Nicky doesn’t say. Instead, as quickly as he can, he explains what he saw, doing his best to show the woman in a bad light. _Chasing a kid,_ he says, a _nd he asked us to help. She hurts him. Not from here, either_.

He only exaggerates a little, but it’s enough for the officer to take her with him once she’s patched up. (Just a bad sprain. Nicky is almost disappointed.)

He never learns what happens to her. He wonders, but there’s nothing on the news and he only has a few months left.

He settles back into enjoying his time in Germany and forgets about it.

****

_“You saved my life, there,” Neil says. “She was one of my father’s associates. If she had gotten to me, I would be dead. Your distraction let me get to my mother. We were in a different country by sundown.”_

_“Oh,” Nicky breathes. He had half known that, but the full realization hits him now. He asks, “What happened to her?”_

_“Her name was Lila,” Neil tells him. “Lola’s cousin. She was sent to do gang work for her failure. Died in a shootout a few years later.” He hesitates, then “Lola told me. Held a grudge for getting her cousin and best friend killed.”_

_“Good,” Nicky says mercilessly. The team’s look of surprise almost amuses him. He’s a colligate exy player for the Foxes. They can’t really think he’s a mindless flirt all the way through. He’s related to Andrew, isn’t he?_

_There’s silence, brief and sharp. None of the Foxes speak._

_Renee looks at Neil. He looks back._

_“Switzerland, next,” Neil says. It shatters their stillness like glass, like a breath let out. Allison nods, leaning forward._

_“Right, then I’m up,” she announces, more subdued than they’ve seen her in months. “Switzerland. Resort. Kissing. All the components for a juicy story,” she says, half sarcastic._

_She shoots a nervous look at Andrew. He meets her gaze levelly, without changing his expression. Allison relaxes and begins._

Allison didn’t mind the resort.

It wasn’t her favorite place to be, of course-far too cold. But it was nice enough.

She stays in her room, most of the time. She has her own-the owner is a ‘friend’ of her parents-and it’s safer in here. (They don’t think she knows about the money laundering the owner is doing, or that the nearby town is a gang hotspot.)(She does, though, and she prefers not to interfere.)

Mostly she says in her room or skiing on the resort’s hills. There’s not much else here, aside from talking to the other guests.

Allison can’t even really do that, since most of them are either too old busy with kids or both. There’s precious few people here her age.

So it’s rather a surprise to see a boy a few years younger, standing by the check-in desk with an older woman. 

An older woman in a staff uniform.

Allison watches her speak to the man behind the front desk, quickly and quietly. He points her towards a door and calls another staff member over to escort her son to the kids’ area. 

Allison doesn’t usually go there-her room is nice enough, and if she isn’t there she’s out-but she’s been. It’s a half miserable place, with TV’s on the wall that only black black and white movies and too-soft chairs.

She wonders, briefly, if he could be a friend. A _real_ friend. She doesn’t have many, and all of them are back in America.

Allison waits, plans. He’ll be staying a while if his mother works here, but if she's only one of the temporary staff that fill in, it’s not worth trying. 

So Allison waits a week, then two. He keeps coming, his mother dropping him at the front desk in the morning.

She decides to do it. She’s wasted enough time already, and one of her friends from home has stopped responding to emails.

Allison makes her way to the kids’ area around noon. As expected, the boy is there, staring blankly at a textbook.

Who studies over break? She knows maybe two people who actually do, and there’s a reason she doesn’t talk to them.

_“Again,” Dan says, mock-scolding. “Do your homework, kids. Don’t be like Allison.”_

_Allison laughs, high and sharp. Neil cuts in quickly, talking over the sudden noise to explain that it was a stolen book about exy. Andrew throws his arm over his eyes and groans. Kevin lights up, looking at Neil._

_“No,” Allison says flatly, gesturing at Kevin. He starts to protest, but she continues before he can._

She can’t bring herself to care, now. This might be her only chance to talk to him, and she isn’t going to blow her chance at a friend here just because of this.

She sits next to him and curses how far she sinks into the seat. These chairs are ridiculously expensive, even by her standards, and they’re overstuffed and too-soft.

She waits until her patience gives out and the boy still hasn’t looked at her.

So she speaks. 

  
She talks until he realizes it’s directed at him, then keeps going. She rambles about anything and everything, trying to sand the edges off so she doesn’t scare him away.

And then he responds.

Allison learns a lot that first day. She makes a list, later, while she’s ordering exy magazines from the town

His name is Johan.

He’s fifteen, two years younger.

He loves exy the same way she does. More, even.

He’s just as sharp-edged and mean as she is.

Johan starts spending days in her room, and they talk and talk and talk about exy, about the other guests, about anything. She takes him skiing once, both of them sneaking out to do it. 

It’s nice. More than nice. It’s having a friend, a _real_ one, who cares about her for _her_ and not her money.

It lasts three weeks.

“I have to leave,” Johan says from where he’s sprawled across her floor, flipping through exy magazines. “I mean. My mom and I, we’re going soon.”

“How soon?” Allison asks. She makes her voice flippant, ignoring the feeling in her chest like her lungs won’t expand. 

“Next week. Mom has a new job in…” he trails off, waving one hand the way he always does when he doesn’t want to say.

Allison realizes, with a sudden force that makes her heart skip a beat, that she doesn’t _know_ anything about Johan. 

She knows his age, and that he likes exy, but she doesn’t know his middle name or where he grew up. She doesn’t know where he goes to school or what he wants to do, if he even _has_ any wants, anything. She doesn’t even know his mother’s name.

She doesn’t ask. It would be like invading, she thinks, like crossing a line she didn’t know they had.

Allison follows him out that day. He always leaves late in the afternoon, and she watches him wait outside for his mother sometimes.

It’s snowing, now, and it drifts around them in cold clumps that make her glad for her coat.

He turns to her when they get to his normal waiting spot but doesn’t say anything. His cheeks are pink with cold and the ends of his hair hang over his eyes.

Allison looks at him and decides her plan. She starts with laying one gloved hand on his shoulder. Johan grips her upper arm loosely.

Allison leans forward and kisses him. 

It isn’t her first kiss, and she’d gleaned enough to know it’s not his, either. It’s quick and chaste and dry, more like kissing a brother than a boyfriend. They pull away quickly and Johan steps back.

Allison starts to ask if he’s alright, but before she can Johan’s mother is there, pulling him away with barely a backwards glance and an almost surprising strength. She’s speaking a German-Allison recognizes it from one of her parents’ associates, though she doesn’t understand any-with a harsh sternness that doesn’t fade with distance.

Allison watches them go and mourns whatever intangible thing that had been between them.

****

_“I’m sorry,” Neil says quietly, looking at the ceiling._

_“Nothing to be sorry for,” Allison tells him. It’s stern and soft and everything he remembers rebuilt._

_Andrew shifts closer to Neil. Renee lays her head on Allison’s shoulder. It’s still and silent, everybody taking in what they’d heard._

_Then Nicky laughs. It’s the harsh, throat-scraped-raw sound of humor in the buried past, and it sets them all off._

_“You kissed him?” Matt asks, flinging his arms wide. There’s bursts of laughter and Nicky’s crying with it._

_They let the stress of the past hours go and soon enough they’re sitting, waiting, silent._

_It’s Renee’s turn next, and they know it’ll be heavy. Both her and Neil’s weight to bear, shared between them all._

Renee sees the boy on the side of the road before anyone else.

It’s not unexpected. She’s always been more observant, and their conversation over the blaring music wipes consumes them.

She’s sitting in the back, watching out the window and enjoying watching the rolling hills. It’s so different from the dirt and dark of city streets it feels a world away, she thinks, and it still brings that newly familiar freedom, that relief. She’s out. She’s alive. 

She’s _Renee_.

_“Always,” Allison hisses, almost surprisingly fierce. Insistent. Dan echoes it, nodding. “You two-” she continues, gesturing slightly at Neil as she tightens her arm aound Renee, “-belong to us now. You’re Foxes.”_

_“We’re Foxes,” Renee repeats, smiling._

She double takes when she sees, and it’s almost too late when she realizes her friends missed him, “Stop,” she says, and Marie reaches forward to turn the music down. “Pull over.”

Alex frowns at her in the mirror but compiles, flipping on the turn signal and coming to a stop at the side of the road.

Renee ignores their questions-they’ll see soon enough-opening her door and leaning out. The boy is still there, watching her warily and holding a duffel bag close to his chest.

“Need a ride?” Renee calls. “We can drop you off at the next city, if you’d like.”

She can see him hesitate, even from here. He looks back, down the road where they’d just been, then at her again. 

Renee smiles, doing her best to seem as friendly and open as possible.

He nods slowly, determinedly, and starts forward.

There’s technically three seats in the back of the car, but it’s so small the middle one is barely big enough for her bag. When the boy takes the far seat and buckles in, there’s only about a foot between their knees. 

Renee smooths down her dress and watches him out of the corner of her eyes. He sits silently, gaze flickering between the window and the car’s occupants.

Marie casts a look back at Renee, then shrugs and turns the radio back on. Alex steers them back onto the highway and they’re off, headed for the next city.

Renee settles back into her seat and watches the boy from the corner of her eye. He doesn’t offer a name, so she doesn’t either.

He shifts in his seat, clutching the beaten duffel bag close and glancing around warily. He reminds Renee of a stray cat she’d known once-untrusting and suspicious, all bruised up.

He’s hiding.

Running, more likely. She knows the signs of it. 

_“Can’t leave your past too far,” Neil murmurs. “Some of it always sticks.”_

Traffic grows steadily worse as they near the city. The boy runs a hand through his dyed blond hair, and Renee’s tempted to drag him to the nearest convenience store. Your eyebrows stick out, she’d say. If you want the dye to work, to hide you, it needs to match. Auburn and blond, blaring like a stoplight.

She might be overreacting. (It was always the smallest details, then, that damned her.)

There’s a billboard, flashing advertisements, right outside the city. The boy looks at it, blindly, and Renee takes the opportunity to survey him more closely.

She sees what it says too late. An ad about a documentary on the crime lords of the east coast. She’s been hearing about it for months, and she’s half-considering buying a subscription just to see it.

“Snack break?” Marie asks and Renee blinks herself out of the small trance she’d fallen into. 

“Yes, please,” she says. She looks at the boy, offers, “We can drop you off there. I’ll buy you some stuff for the road.” 

He hesitates, then nods slightly. Renee smiles.

They pull into the next gas station and Alex stops to pump gas. Marie lists a few things she wants, handing Renee her credit card, and Alex adds a few of their favorites to the list.

She glances back and the boy, gestures for him to follow. His eyes are puffy and red in the brighter sunlight, though it’s faint enough she doesn’t think anyone notices. 

In the gas station light he looks more tired than she’d been able to see before. There’s more to it than that, though-he looks stretched thin, like he’s seen his death and it’s following him.

Renee piles snacks and drinks into the basket on her arm and watches him pick a few things off the shelves quietly. He holds them in his arms, granola bars and bandaids, and ignores her offer to pay.

They’re stepping up to the register when she notices it. She’d waved him in front, since he has less, and it’s as he leans forward to pay his jacket slips up and exposes a blood-stained shirt.

She stifles her gasp and waits. He pays, then steps over to the door. He doesn’t go out, just watches her as silently as he’s been since they met.

She pretends she hadn’t seen anything while she waits at the register. It’s over quickly, and then she’s next to him.

“I know you’re hurt,” she whispers. “I can help, if you’d like. I’ve bandaged people before, and I have no one to tell.”

He shifts, eyes flicking uneasily to the door, but surrenders easily enough. He passes the box of bandaids to her.

Renee steps up to the register, holding her bags. “Can I just leave these here a moment?” she asks with the most saintly expression she can. “My brother scraped his back up falling out of a tree and he can’t reach to replace the bandaids.” She laughs, trying to convey something like _silly boys, always getting hurt, right?_

It must work, because the cashier shrugs and reaches for her bag. She hands it over and watches him set it down, still smiling.

“Saint Renee,” Nicky crows. “Sweet as ice.”

Renee laughs.

The boy follows her into the bathroom. Thankfully it’s just the one room, no stalls or such, so the boy sets the bandaids and a small bottle of antiseptic on the baby-changing tray and steps back to watch her.

“Pull up your shirt,” Renee says, gentle and commanding. “I need to see to help.

“It’s not pretty,” he warns, avoiding her eyes.

“I don’t expect it to be. Mine isn’t, either.”

He blinks, caught off guard, and when he meets her eyes it’s with realization sparking behind them. He open his mouth, just slightly, like he wants to ask if she’d been through it all, too. 

She has. She doesn’t talk about it.

Renee holds up one hand, palm towards her, and shows off her scarred knuckles. There’s lines carved into her hand and wrist, pale and thin, and she watches his eyes catch on them.

He closes his mouth, his eyes, and pulls his shirt over his head.

Renee makes herself stay still and silent, forces herself to not react. It’s hard, with the carnage of his skin clear in front of her. It’s new layered on old layered on older and older, until he’s made up of more scar tissue than clear skin.

More important, now, is the shallow-bleeding scrapes and cuts. Renee busies herself with it, falling into a pattern of wipe-antiseptic-bandaid quickly. 

He sits, staring at the wall. He doesn’t react to the sting of the antiseptic or when Renee has to rip of a bandage. She’s almost concerned, but she recognizes it. 

He’s running. Has been for a long while, by the looks off it.

They finish quickly and he tugs his shirt and jacket back on roughly. Renee stops to fetch her bags. He waits, just outside the door, and looks at her.

He’s on the edge of a breakdown, Renee thinks. He can’t go much further.

She’s about to tell him to stay with her, about to offer a promise she’s not she she can keep. 

She doesn’t get the chance.

He mutters one word, the first she’d heard from him, and turns on his heel. 

Then he’s off, running and running and running, and Renee doubts she’ll ever see him again.

She sends her best with him, a quick prayer Stephanie had taught her. 

****

_Neil says, “I remember now. It was after my mother died.”_

_Renee hums. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” she says._

_Neil nods and leans back. “That’s all of us,” he says, looking at them one-by-one. “I’ve met you all, before.”_

_“How small the world,” Andrew says, the first he’s spoken in hours._

_The Foxes sit in a dark hotel room, gathered on floors and couches._

_They’re not unfamiliar, anymore. Now, here, they have the strangest of threads that bind them together._

_Neil smiles and thinks, home._

_Maybe recognition isn’t always so bad._

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> I did have to cut one scene with Matt in order to be able to post in time :( but I hope to finish and add it later.


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